Navegadores italianos e as ilhas atlânticas no De Canaria de Boccaccio

In 1341, during the reign of D. Afonso IV, a Luso-Florentine-Genoese expedition (also with the participation of Castilians) was sent to the Canary Islands: it was commanded by the Florentine Angelino del Tegghia de’ Corbizzi and by the Genoese Niccoloso da Recco. This voyage is known because it was the subject of a brief work in Latin (De Canaria et insulis reliquis ultra Ispaniam in Occeano noviter repertis) by one of the most famous Italian authors of the Middle Ages, Giovanni Boccaccio, who based his account on letters written from Seville by some Florentine merchants. The expedition explored Madeira and the Canary Islands (which had been discovered a few years earlier by Lanzarotto Malocello). Boccaccio’s work has received the attention of both linguists and historians, and the text was translated and published in Portuguese in 1835 in the Memorias of the Academia Real das Sciencias of Lisbon. In the 700th anniversary of the contract signed between D. Dinis and the Genoese Emanuel Pessagno (Pesanha), it seems pertinent to present this text once again, in order to discuss the context in which it was written, and the academic works that have been dedicated to the De Canaria in the last decades both in Italy and in the Iberian Peninsula.